Mentoring
Mentorship has become an increasingly important part of faculty life. As life in the academy has grown more complex, and as faculty participate in a wide range of activities in an often fractured and fragmented environment, mutual support is ever more important. Faculty of color face particular pressures as they feel the need to serve as role models and mentors to students of color and to ‘meet every institutional need for ethnic representation’. (CHE: The invisible Labor of Minority Professors) The ability to confer with one or more colleagues about the challenges of faculty life, teaching, advising and supporting students, research and creative practice, preparing for review, building and administering academic programs has proven to be beneficial.
Research has shown that participation in a formal mentorship program plays a significant role in a faculty member’s personal, social and professional sense of well being. It results in “more advanced professional skills, higher levels of research [and creative practice] productivity, and greater career achievement.” (Boice 2000) Formal mentoring also delivers benefits to senior faculty, revitalizing their approaches to teaching, research and creative practice and recognizing their experience and expertise. (Tauer 1996, Martin 2002)
The New School favors an inclusive, non-hierarchical approach to formal mentoring and does not promote a traditional, top-down model. Mentoring happens in many ways according to faculty need. Options include:
- One-on-one mentoring
- Group mentoring
- Senior-to-junior mentoring
- Peer-to-peer mentoring
- Junior-to-senior mentoring
- Mentoring within departments and programs
- Mentoring across departments and programs
- If needed, mentoring from outside the university
The provost’s office also provides mentoring grants to support individual and group mentoring activities.
Faculty may develop mentoring relationships with senior experts or early-career practitioners; they may collaborate with non-faculty professionals such as librarians, curators, and editors.
Participation in the formal Colleague to Colleague Mentoring Program, as mentor or mentee, is voluntary, but strongly encouraged. The program is intended to span three years; the minimum requirement is to meet twice a semester for an hour to discuss academic and work-life issues.
